Omair Bhat

How's Kashmir advancing into autumn? Have leaves already turned yellow? Do they spiral down like listless words and settle in your hair? What poems do they etch , in rain, on the plaques of your sadness? Have walnuts been shed from trees? I can imagine your hands red from the colour of green walnut hulls. I can imagine your mother rebuking you and you telling her ' Ma, in winter, just as every other colour vanishes, this dark hint of my ' haang ' will also vanish, quietly, from my hands. ' ( Write to me if you still go out, at daybreak, into mist, to collect fallen walnuts? The count of your winter treasure of walnuts, years ago, was less than mine. You had vowed you'd collect more next ...